The Future of Food Media? food52 and Crowd-Sourced Recipes

Starting tomorrow, bonappetit.com will feature the four finalist recipes from food52′s weekly contests with aquick note from founders Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs. We hope you’ll get involved in food52 and help link our passionate food community to theirs.

The goal of food52 is both simple and brilliant: to publish a cookbook of recipes submitted online by home cooks. But food52, a website founded by Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs, has quickly evolved into something bigger than its end game. By setting up weekly contests that entice their users to submit recipes, vote for their favorites, and become crowned as winners, Hesser and Stubbs have built a dedicated community of cooks. Their community is engaged, their community is discerning, and most remarkably, their community is providing them with some darn good recipes.

Each week Hesser and Stubbs announce two themes(for example, this week’s themes are salmon recipes and Caesar saladrecipes). Home cooks have five days to submit recipes, then Hesser andStubbs pick two Caesar salads and two salmon recipes as finalists, and turn it back over to thecommunity to vote for the winning salad and the winning salmon. Winning recipesfrom each week’s themes will be featured in a cookbook to be published byHarperStudio. This cycle lasts for a year–52 weeks–hence the name food52. And even though they’re already on week 48, the founders say theweekly contests will continue after 52, plus, they have a secondcookbook deal in place (the concept for the book will be decided with input from theircommunity, of course.)

Hesser and Stubbs got the idea for their project while working together on a New York Times cookbook. Testing recipes for the Times,they realized that the best ones came from home cooks, so they launcheda crowd-sourced recipe database. Now the duo feels they can rely on their community to provide excellent content for their website–for free. The contests, guided by Hesser and Stubbs, help ensure the quality of the recipes in their database.

This concept has been received with some controversy. In traditional food media (including the offices of Bon Appetit), recipes are developed by paid contributors–cookbook authors, cooking teachers, chefs, etc–then tested and retested in professional kitchens. So what creates a better product, the professionals or the curated masses? (And of course, the next question is, does it matter? If the masses create content for free, how will businesses be able to pay contributors for it?)

In the case of food52, the debate reached a showdown: Christopher Kimball, founder of Cook’s Illustrated, wrote on his blog in October: “I am willing to put my money, and my reputation, where my big mouthis. I offer a challenge to any supporter of the WIKI or similar conceptto jump in and go head to head with our test kitchen.” Hesser and Stubbs took him up on it, and recipes from Cook’s for pork shoulder and sugar cookies are pitted against the winning recipes in those categories from food52. You can go check them out and cast your vote on Slate.

Our position in the showdown is this: We love food52; we respect and enjoy the collective creativity of their community. We also stand by our Test Kitchen that has turned out delicious, reliable recipes for more than 50 years. At a time when consumption of industrialized food and the decline in home cooking is leading to record-breaking obesity and a national health care crisis, we celebrate any movement that ignites a passion for food. The more great recipes, the better. But more importantly, the more people we get cooking, the better.

Starting tomorrow, we will feature the two finalist recipes of each week’s food52 contests with aquick note from Hesser and Stubbs. We hope you’ll get involved in food52 and help link our passionate food community to theirs.

Check back tomorrow for a Q&A with Hesser and Stubbs and check back every Wednesday to find out which recipes they pick as that week’s finalists.